[VIDEO] White House ‘Wasn’t Forthcoming’ on Gruber’s Obamacare Role: Mark Halperin: ‘They were right. The Republicans were right’
Posted: June 23, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Health And Human Services, Health law, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Mark Halperin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Morning Joe, MSNBC, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, White House 2 CommentsEmails show Jonathan Gruber, the economist who said Obamacare was written deceptively in order to pass the attention of stupid American voters, played a far wider role in the law’s instrumentation than the White House previously said.
Longtime political journalist and pundit Mark Halperin says he owes his Republican sources “an apology” after apparently doubting their claims that MIT economist Jonathan Gruber played a major role in crafting ObamaCare.
Halperin, Bloomberg Politics managing editor, addressed the controversy on MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” on Monday, after a Wall Street Journal report first revealed emails showing Gruber playing a deeper role than previously thought.
“I owe all my Republican sources an apology because they kept telling me he was hugely involved, and the White House played it down,” Halperin said. “They were right. The Republicans were right.” Read the rest of this entry »
Contrary To White House Denials, Jonathan Gruber Was ‘Integral’ To Obamacare
Posted: June 23, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Barack Obama, Health And Human Services, Jason Chaffetz, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Supreme Court of the United States, The Wall Street Journal, United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, White House Leave a comment
Gruber’s role may help decide the King v. Burwellcase that is now before the Supreme Court, the one that will shape Obamacare’s implementation for years to come
Avik Roy
writes: Last fall, videos emerged showing MIT economist Jonathan Gruber—the architect of Obamacare—mocking “the stupidity of the American voter” for not perceiving the ways in which the controversial health law concealed its true costs. At the time, President Obama and others went through great lengths to deny Gruber’s centrality to Obamacare.
[DISCLOSURE: I am an adviser to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, but the opinions in this post are mine, and do not necessarily correspond to those of Gov. Perry.]
But 20,000 pages of new emails, obtained from MIT by the House Oversight Committee, appear to prove Gruber’s critical role. And Gruber’s role may help decide the King v. Burwellcase that is now before the Supreme Court, the one that will shape Obamacare’s implementation for years to come.
[Read the full text here, at Forbes]
Gruber, the ‘independent expert’
In October 2009, as the debate over Obamacare crested in Congress, PriceWaterhouseCoopers published a prescient analysis projecting that, under Obamacare, health insurance premiums would increase by 47 percent in 2016 for people who bought coverage on their own: the “individual” or “non-group” market in 
health insurance parlance.
[Stephanie Armour of the Wall Street Journal first reported the existence of the new email trove]
If anything, PwC understated Obamacare’s impact on individual-market premiums. But the report directly contradicted President Obama’s wild claim that Obamacare would “lower your premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.”
[Also see – Yes, Jonathan Gruber Is an Obamacare Architect – by Veronique De Rugy]
Democrats understood how much the report threatened the passage of Obamacare, and rolled out Jonathan Gruber—an “independent expert”—to assure senators that the “Affordable Care Act” would live up to its name.
Gruber scored an interview with Ezra Klein, then blogging at the Washington Post, in which Gruber said that “what we know for sure the bill will do is that it will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance.” (Emphasis added.) Read the rest of this entry »
MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber Had Bigger Role in Health Law, Emails Show
Posted: June 21, 2015 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Politics, White House | Tags: ACA, Affordable Care Act, Health And Human Services, Jeffrey Sachs, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Matthew Ladner, Obamacare, Office of Management and Budget, Poverty reduction, The Wall Street Journal 2 Comments
Adviser whose comments on Affordable Care Act touched off a furor worked more closely than previously known with White House
“His proximity to HHS and the White House was a whole lot tighter than they admitted. There’s no doubt he was a much more integral part of this than they’ve said. He put up this facade he was an arm’s length away. It was a farce.”
The emails provided by the House Oversight Committee to The Wall Street Journal cover messages Mr. Gruber sent from January 2009 through March 2010. Committee staffers said they worked with MIT to obtain the 20,000 pages of emails.
They depict frequent consultations between Mr. Gruber and top Obama administration staffers and advisers in the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services on the Affordable Care Act. They show he informed HHS about interviews with reporters and discussions with lawmakers, and that he consulted with HHS about how to publicly describe his role.
The administration has sought to distance itself from the MIT economist in the wake of his controversial statements in a 2013 video where he said the health law passed because of the “huge political advantage” of the legislation’s lacking transparency. He also referred to the “stupidity of the American voter.”
Republicans seized on the comments as evidence that supporters of the law purposely misled the public about its costs. Mr. Gruber received nearly $400,000 from HHS for his work focusing on health-policy computer models, according to public records.
The White House has described Mr. Gruber as having a limited role in crafting the law. President Barack Obama in 2014 said Mr. Gruber was “some adviser who never worked on our staff.” In testimony last year before Congress, Mr. Gruber disagreed with the widespread characterization of his role as the “architect” of Mr. Obama’s health-care plan.
“His proximity to HHS and the White House was a whole lot tighter than they admitted,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, (R. Utah), chairman of the House oversight committee. “There’s no doubt he was a much more integral part of this than they’ve said. He put up this facade he was an arm’s length away. It was a farce.”
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
Mr. Chaffetz on Sunday sent a letter to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwellrequesting information justifying the department’s sole source contract with Mr. Gruber for his work on the health law.
Mr. Gruber declined to comment. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Gruber Refuses to Tell Congress Amount Government Paid Him for Obamacare
Posted: December 9, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: California, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Darrell Issa, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Marilyn Tavenner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama administration, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republican Party (United States), United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 2 Comments“Would you agree to supplement your Exhibit B, so that we would have . . . your state revenue that you would’ve also received, since ultimately it’s Affordable Care Act-related?”
Fresh from The Corner, Brendan Bordelon reports: Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber repeatedly refused to answer how much money the government paid him for advice on crafting and explaining the Affordable Care Act — prompting incredulous responses from Republican lawmakers, who reminded the professor he was under oath.
“I’m sure my counsel would be happy to take that up with you.”
— Jonathan Gruber
GOP Oversight chairman Darrel Issa informed Gruber that due to a misfiled form, the committee did not receive the complete compensation data for his work on Obamacare.
“Actually I was asking would you agree to provide it.”
— Oversight chairman Darrel Issa
“Why doesn’t he just tell us? How much money did you get from the state taxpayers and the federal taxpayers? He’s under oath, why doesn’t he tell us how much he got paid by the taxpayers? We don’t have to wait for him to send something to us, he should just be able to tell us.”
— Ohio Republican Jim Jordan
“As I said, the committee could take that up with my counsel.”
— Jonathan Gruber
Transcript: Jon Gruber’s Opening Statement to the House Oversight Committee
Posted: December 9, 2014 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, U.S. News | Tags: Americans, Andrew Jackson, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Democratic Party (United States), Health policy, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Los Angeles Times, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, United States 1 Comment
Written Testimony of Professor Jonathan Gruber before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, December 9, 2014
[PDF – Gruber-Statement-12-9-ObamaCare]
Chairman Issa, Ranking Member Cummings, and Distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify voluntarily today. I am pleased to be able to address some statements I have made regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the reactions to and interpretations of those statements.
I am a Professor of Economics at MIT. I am not a political advisor nor a politician. Over the past decade I have used a complex economic microsimulation model to help a number of states and the federal government assess the impact that various legislative options for health care reform might have on the state and federal health care systems, government budgets, and overall economies. I have had the privilege of working for both Democratic and Republican administrations on health care reform efforts. For example, I worked extensively with Governor Romney’s Administration and the Massachusetts legislature to model the impact of Governor Romney’s landmark health reform legislation. I later served as a technical consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and provided similar support to both the Administration and Congress through economic microsimulation modeling of the Affordable Care Act.
I did not draft Governor Romney’s health care plan, and I was not the “architect” of President Obama’s health care plan. I ran microsimulation models to help those in the state and federal executive and 
legislative branches better assess the likely outcomes of various possible policy choices.
[More – Katie Pavlich – TownHall.com]
After the passage of the ACA, I made a series of speeches around the nation endeavoring to explain the law’s implications for the U.S. health care system from the perspective of a trained economist. Many of these speeches were to technical audiences at economic and academic conferences.
Over the past weeks a number of videos have emerged from these appearances. In excerpts of these videos I am shown making a series of glib, thoughtless, and sometimes downright insulting comments. I apologized for the first of these videos earlier. But the ongoing attention paid to these videos has made me realize that a fuller accounting is necessary.
I would like to begin by apologizing sincerely for the offending comments that I made. In some cases I made uninformed and glib comments about the political process behind health care reform. I am not an expert on politics and my tone implied that I was, which is wrong. In other cases I simply made insulting and mean comments that are totally uncalled for in any situation. I sincerely apologize both for conjecturing with a tone of expertise and for doing so in such a disparaging fashion. It is never appropriate to try to make oneself seem more important or smarter by demeaning others. I know better. I knew better. I am embarrassed, and I am sorry.
In addition to apologizing for my unacceptable remarks, I would like to clarify some misconceptions about the content and context of my comments. Let me be very clear: I do not think that the Affordable Care Act was passed in a non-transparent fashion. The issues I raised in my comments, such as redistribution of risk through insurance market reform and the structure of the Cadillac tax, were roundly debated throughout 2009 and early 2010 before the law was passed. Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of these policies, but it is completely clear that these issues were debated thoroughly during the drafting and passage of the ACA. Read the rest of this entry »
Scott Gottlieb: ObamaCare’s Threat to Private Practice
Posted: December 7, 2014 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Think Tank | Tags: Accountable care organization, Barack Obama, Congressional Budget Office, Health Insurance, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Medicaid, Medicare (United States), Medicare Part D, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 1 Comment
A true legislative alternative to ObamaCare would support physician ownership of independent medical practices, and preserve local competition between doctors and choice for patients.
Scott Gottlieb writes: Here’s a dirty little secret about recent attempts to fix ObamaCare. The “reforms,” approved by Senate and House leaders this summer and set to advance in the next Congress, adopt many of the Medicare payment reforms already in the Affordable Care Act. Both favor the consolidation of previously independent doctors into salaried roles inside larger institutions, usually tied to a central hospital, in effect ending independent medical practices.
“ObamaCare has accelerated many of the detrimental trends doctors see in their profession, and introduced new ones.”
Republicans must embrace a different vision to this forced reorganization of how medicine is practiced in America if they want to offer an alternative to ObamaCare. The law’s defenders view this consolidation as a necessary step to enable payment provisions that shift the financial risk of delivering medical care onto providers and away from government programs like Medicare. The law’s architects believe that doctors, to better bear financial risk, need to be part of larger, and presumably better-capitalized institutions. Indeed, the law has already gone a long way in achieving that outcome.
“Reformers in Washington need to do a better job of explaining how market-based alternatives to ObamaCare are a better outcome for the structure and delivery of health care. And how they intend to preserve the entrepreneurship, autonomy and physician ownership that have long been the hallmark of American medicine.”
A recent Physicians Foundation survey of some 20,000 U.S. doctors found that 35% described themselves as independent, down from 49% in 2012 and 62% in 2008. Once independent doctors become the exception rather than the rule, the continued advance of the ObamaCare agenda will become virtually unstoppable. Read the rest of this entry »
Gruber Agrees to Testify Before Congress
Posted: November 25, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Darrell Issa, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Marilyn Tavenner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, United States, United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 3 Comments
Brendan Bordelon writes: Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor and Obamacare architect behind a series of revealing and offensive comments on the health-care law, has agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee next month.
Gruber became notorious earlier this month after a series of videos surfaced showing him explaining how Obamacare was deliberately designed to be deceptive — and belittling the intelligence of American voters in the process. Read the rest of this entry »
Transparency: Three Lies About Obamacare Jonathan Gruber Accidentally Revealed
Posted: November 24, 2014 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Contraceptive mandate (United States), Health care reform, Health Insurance, Individual mandate, Internal Revenue Service, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Medicaid, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Subsidy, Supreme Court of the United States, United States 1 Comment
1. The Individual Mandate ‘Is Absolutely Not a Tax Increase’
2. Congress Meant for Subsidies to Flow Through State-based and Federal Exchanges
3. Obamacare Will Make Health Insurance More Affordable
Philip Klein: Obamacare Repeal is More Likely, and Now GOP Needs an Alternative
Posted: November 17, 2014 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, History | Tags: Asa Hutchinson, Barack Obama, Health Insurance, Health law, Individual mandate, Insurance, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama administration, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Republican Party (United States), Subsidy, Supreme Court of the United States 1 Comment
Philip Klein writes: This month, two developments have shaken the conventional wisdom that repealing President Obama’s healthcare law is an impossibility.
First, Republicans scored a historic election victory, not only taking control of the Senate but likely winning the most House seats since 1928 — the year before Ernest Hemingway published A Farewell to Arms.
Second, the Supreme Court took up another case on Obamacare, and if the justices rule against the administration, it would force a re-opening of the law.
“Benson’s fear is that if the Supreme Court rules against the Obama administration, whatever the merits of the decision, liberal media would portray it as a right-wing court ripping health insurance away from millions over a silly typo out of animosity for the poor. And if Republicans didn’t pass a simple fix to change the wording, they’d be accused of mass murder.”
This doesn’t even account for the recently released videos of one of Obamacare’s main architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, conceding that Democrats misled the public to get the legislation passed, benefiting from “the stupidity of the American voter.”
“The problem for Republicans — which I tried to convey to Benson in a spirited exchange that followed — is that going along with such a “fix” would be rightly seen as a complete surrender by Republicans that would alienate conservatives and enshrine Obamacare forever.”
The prospects of repealing Obamacare can now be better described, in the words of Rocco Lampone in The Godfather Part II, as “difficult, not impossible.”
But the hope of repealing Obamacare, however remote, is all the more reason for Republicans to begin coalescing around a real alternative to the law.
“That is why conservatives should push Republicans to have an alternative plan ready to pass should the Supreme Court strike down the federal subsidies — a decision that should come by late June. “
Due to their suspicions of Republicans, whenever anybody utters the phrases “Obamacare alternative” or “repeal and replace,” many conservatives tend to hear “Obamacare lite.”
However, not every alternative to Obamacare needs to be a watered-down version of the healthcare law. And in fact, it’s always worth keeping in mind that even before Obamacare, the United States did not have a free market healthcare system. Read the rest of this entry »
Kurtz: Media Blackout Shields ObamaCare Architect Who Bet on Public Stupidity
Posted: November 17, 2014 Filed under: Censorship, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: CNN, Howard Dean, Howard Kurtz, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mika Brzezinski, Morning Joe, MSNBC, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Paul Krugman, Ronan Farrow, The New York Times, The Washington Post, United States 1 Comment
Howard Kurtz
: I’ve been trying to figure out why the mainstream media has all but decided to ignore one of ObamaCare’s chief architects saying the administration played on the public’s stupidity in passing the law.
After all, the press usually loves when hidden video surfaces, as it did this week with MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, and we get unvarnished comments showing what someone really and truly believes.
And yet there hasn’t been a mention on the network evening newscasts. CNN’s Jake Tapper, to his credit, played the clip twice, asked two senators about it and wrote an online column on the subject, but that was about it for the network. Nothing in the Washington Post but for a couple of online items.
(Update: The Washington Post finally got around to covering the controversy today, three days after it broke.) Not a word in the New York Times, which in 2012 ran a puffy profile of Gruber (“It is his research that convinced the Obama administration that health care reform could not work without requiring everyone to buy insurance”).
image – businessweek.com
This is utterly inexplicable, except as a matter of bias. No matter what you think of ObamaCare, on what planet is this not news? Maybe on that comet where the spaceship just landed.
I tried to think of the possible excuses. Too busy covering other stories? Hey, nobody in America has Ebola anymore! The only real competition is a big winter storm and Eminem disgustingly dropping F-bombs at HBO’s Veterans Day concert.
Was Gruber’s point about health care taxes and mandates too complicated? Then explain it. Besides, it isn’t that this argument never came up before; it’s that Gruber fesses up to the attempt at deception. Read the rest of this entry »
Exposed: Jonathan Gruber’s Impressive Record of White House Endorsements
Posted: November 16, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Cadillac insurance plan, Jonathan Gruber, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama administration, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Social media, The Daily Caller, Twitter 3 CommentsWhite House sent *SEVENTY ONE* emails touting Gruber’s work – a lot of emails for a guy Obama dismisses as a nobody. pic.twitter.com/uR7eTfUCUZ
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) November 17, 2014
“The fact that some adviser who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is no reflection on the actual process that was run.”
[VIDEO] SIXTH Gruber Video Emerges: ‘Mislabeling’ Helped Us Get Rid of Tax Breaks
Posted: November 14, 2014 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: CNN, Jake Tapper, Jay Carney, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, United States, United States Congress, White House, White House Press Secretary 1 Comment
Jake Tapper reports: In a 2011 conversation about the Affordable Care Act, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the law more commonly known as Obamacare, talked about how the bill would get rid of all tax credits for employer-based health insurance through “mislabeling” what the tax is and who it would hit.
“What that means is the tax that starts out hitting only 8% of the insurance plans essentially amounts over the next 20 years essentially getting rid of the exclusion for employer sponsored plans. This was the only political way we were ever going to take on one of the worst public policies in America.”
In recent days, the past comments of Gruber — who in a 2010 speech noted that he “helped write the federal bill” and “was a paid consultant to the Obama administration to help develop the technical details as well” — have been given renewed attention.
In previously posted but only recently noticed speeches, Gruber discusses how those pushing the bill took part in an “exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” taking advantage of voters’ “stupidity” to create a law that would ultimately be good for them.
The issue at hand in this sixth video is known as the “Cadillac tax,” which was represented as a tax on employers’ expensive health insurance plans…(read more)
“Economists have called for 40 years to get rid of the regressive, inefficient and expensive tax subsidy provided for employer provider health insurance.”
Gruber said at the Pioneer Institute for public policy research in Boston.
“It turns out politically it’s really hard to get rid of. And the only way we could get rid of it was first by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people when we all know it’s a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.”
(The White House press secretary said at a press briefing in 2010: “I would disagree with your notion that it is a tax on an individual since the proposal is written as a tax on an insurance company that offers a plan.”
The second way was have the tax kick in “late, starting in 2018. But by starting it late, we were able to tie the cap for Cadillac Tax to CPI, not medical inflation,” Gruber said. CPI is the consumer price index, which is lower than medical inflation.
Gruber explains that by drafting the bill this way, they were able to pass something that would initially only impact some employer plans though it would eventually hit almost every employer plan….(read more)
Gruber’s are at about the 30:38 mark here.
Former White House press secretary Jay Carney told CNN that Gruber’s remarks in general were “very harmful politically to the president.” Read the rest of this entry »
‘Gruber may believe that American voters are stupid, but he was the one who was dumb enough to say all this on camera’
Posted: November 11, 2014 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Barack Obama, Congressional Budget Office, Individual mandate, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama administration, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Presidency of Barack Obama, WebMD, White House 1 Comment
Peter Suderman writes: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Jonathan Gruber was, by most accounts, one of the key figures in constructing the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare….(read more)
Here’s the full quote:
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO [Congressional Budget Office] scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass….Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
This validates much of what critics have said about the health care law, and the tactics used to pass it, for years.
For one thing, it is an explicit admission that the law was designed in such a way to avoid a CBO score that would have tanked the bill. Basically, the Democrats who wrote the bill knowingly gamed the CBO process.
[Also see Of Course Jonathan Gruber Said That by Charles C. W. Cooke]
It’s also an admission that the law’s authors understood that one of the effects of the bill would be to make healthy people pay for the sick, but declined to say this for fear that it would kill the bill’s chances. In other words, the law’s supporters believed the public would not like some of the bill’s consequences, and knowingly attempted to hide those consequences from the public. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber Bragging About Deceiving the American People, Who He Thinks Are Stupid
Posted: November 9, 2014 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Ambulance emergency response vehicle, Apple Inc, Congressional Budget Office, IOS, Jonathan Gruber (economist), Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, United States Congress 2 CommentsGruber: ‘Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage’
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
Also see – Obamacare Architect: ‘Stupidity of the American Voter’ Made Obamacare Possible
